Comic 225 - Darker Blue, Page 16

Author Notes:

Okay, big kudos to Karma Chameleon for the Shoujo-eyes Grant idea. He already had the miniskirt when I drew this page (was going for a Supergirl thing) but he suggested Shoujo eyes and it was too brilliant to not go back and add. ^^ Really puts a smile on my face. Incidentally, the bit with Grant covering Nicky's ears in the second panel wasn't in the script either. It just kinda happened when I was drawing it.

I wasn't really sure how I was gonna draw the faces of the Blues kids in Antihero-Vision. I tried to do that kind of dot-eyes thing you see in characters like Billy Batson, Tintin, and Christopher Robin (which is a look I typically really hate in characters) but never came out right, so kinda went with this. The idea is the level of detail the kids get.

See, in Darkskull's view of the universe, he's the main character, so he's the only person in the entire world who actually matters. The kids are just innocent pawns in crossfire who are either meant to highlight the horrors of the world by being so innocent or tragically die so he can be torn up and guilty about it. That's why details like Lore's Fluttershy dress and Jenny's Starchild shirt vanish; they're not really characters, they're just props, so they're not important to look at. Even Darkskull in that first panel only looks upset in the way that a bad actor would be when melodramatically processing a poorly-written tragedy.

At the same time of course, he's not quite as eloquent as he is in his head, hence the parade of curse words. Martin had the idea for how to handle the swearing; in his viewpoint, since it's more of a show/movie in his mind, swearing is bleeped. In the real world, since it's a comic, swearing is redded out. That make sense?

This whole "It's my burden and mine alone," sort of thing is a massive pet-peeve of mine too. People suffer tragedies every day; there's being sympathetic, and then there's trying to make it out like you're special because it happened to you. It just makes the character seem like a self-absorbed jerkwad with a martyr complex. I get especially pissed when writers do it with Batman; his philosophy should lead him to the OPPOSITE conclusion; tragedies like his happen all the time. He became Batman to stop it from happening to anyone else.

.... Wow. This one gave me a lot to talk about. Yeah, hope you guys enjoy. ^^

Wow, Adam, you forgot to mention that one big thing that happened with you today. Maybe you should post a reply to this to announce that, sure folks would be happy to hear it.

Funny thing, Adam after some clean-up on this page forgot to censor one of the words. Sure that would have made a pretty dramatic change from the usual for this comic. Heh, is kind of funny really how the language thing works out across the comics - Blues outright aims to be child-friendly, WaR has had plenty of bits of more questionable language (I try not to do it often, but it's come up), and BP has had some of the minor words but I still generally keep it PG. Just sort of weird how those line up.

Speaking of, I like all of the reactions to that here. Nicky looks weirdly ticked off, Lore's more clearly the same, Grant seems ashamed to be hearing it, and Jenny looks outright horrified. Makes me wonder how Andy or Valerie would react to it. Come to think of it, has Andy gotten a Darkskull version yet? Don't think he has.

Given Nicky couldn't hear what was being said, I think he was more ticked off that he wasn't being allowed to listen to it. ^^

But yeah, I saw Star Trek: Into Darkness today. Also I gotta job.

It's not much; it's a minimum wage job as a housekeeper at a hotel, but still gonna apply for other places and see if something better comes along before the summer's over. ^^ But heck, I've been pretty depressed since school let out about not being able to get employed and it's only been getting worse with every passing day. This morning I felt like the biggest failure, how I feel like I can do anything. ^^